Thursday, May 07, 2009

Not the Agents of Change

What I think about when I think about the Six Party Talks: that the three countries at the table who spend the most time staring at one another -- Japan, China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea -- all have been ruled by the same party for the last 54 years (pax the Hosokawa-Hata interregnum)-- and in each case the origins and durability of the ruling party in a particular country can be traced to the events in and actions of the other two countries.

Is there another trio of mutually-reinforcing party governments like unto the LDP, CCP and Workers' Party of Korea triple monopoly-on-power?

2 comments:

That's an interesting observation. And to the extent that they do reinforce each others rule (not too much in the case of China) it's a nice illustration that collusion does not have to be explicit or even intended to be effective.

It's not so much an issue of party politics, but the weak stance of ASEAN vis a vis Burma is sort of similar: there's a broad sense that something needs to be done about that government, but the potential consequences of it collapsing are scary enough that neighbors have a very strong, if not always stated, interest in keeping it afloat. The problem has dragged down ASEAN's credibility in general.